Re:Don't forget historical signifigance
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Cheating Made Easy
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Absolutely, I agree with your points. However when all the books kids are exposed to fall in this category they decide that all books are crusty old and irrelevant. Education needs to be flexible to allow kids to read (for the sake of learning the art of comprehension and retention) books that interest them.
To use an example with a series of books that I own all of (when I was a senior in high school) and you'd appreciate: why couldn't I have made just one graded report on "Tune to Win" or any other of Carrol Smith's books? What's the harm?
I had to resort to near death threats to be allowed to do a report on the Lord of the Rings. My report of Joesph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" was refused because I hadn't asked permission to report on a book not on the list.
Let me tell you from the perspective from a 15 year old it seams like the only reason for a rule like that is that none of the English teachers had read a book since they read the required reading list why they were in high school and did not want to bother to read others.
Re:How about using books that don't suck
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Cheating Made Easy
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hmmm... I haven't read Steinbeck since '82 maybe I should go back to it. I probably have several of his books somewhere...
Re:How about using books that don't suck
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Cheating Made Easy
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Steinbeck was the guy I was specifically thinking of, I find his books dreary.
In the US they had a couple of additional other ones (that I remember): Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon (Good but depressing)
John Knowles - A Separate Peace (OK but depressing)
Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage (depressing & irrelevant )
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling (this book has no redeeming qualities to speak of)
Hemmingway - Old man and the sea (I read this way to young because I went back to it in university and it was quite good and got me to read his other stuff)
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (good but old enough to be nearly irrelevant as racism is very different in the south these days)
Look at these books, most of them where written quite a while ago and take place even longer ago. The style they were written in does have the same impact it had on the people that read when they came out. Really I don't mind reading books written a while ago (my current kick is great white hunter tales of the late 1800's) but kids want things that are interesting, fun and relevant to them not some endless stream of old depressing (or repressed) crap. Some percentage really should be fun up to date literature even if it is the modern day equivalent of "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze!" (Great stuff!)
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Funny George Orwell's 1984 means more to me now than when I read it in... 1984!
How about using books that don't suck
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Cheating Made Easy
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Really, some of the books felt ancient and meaningless when I went to school and they still requiring kids to read them!
I'm an avid book collector and for some stupid reason still have the books I had to read in US high school and I've read them many years later on a rainy day out of boredom and guess what they STILL suck. Easily the worst 2~3% of my collection come from either required reading lists. That's not to say that they are all bad, but the required list's batting average would put them on the bench in my team!
How about books that are more relevant to the lives young people live today?
I think it is a grievous insult to Skinner as he was a serious scientist and the line of investigation that bears his name still is meaningful and interesting.
John LaMuth at best is some sort of freaky delusional Californian and worst is money grubbing opportunist. This is not science; it's unworthy of a patent and is simply one of hundreds of examples of capitalism at its worst that appear to pour out of America and American politicians today.
Wow, it's awful early in the morning for me to start ranting but I suppose patents is a worthy topic!
Yeah, I would have expected you would have heard from Andrei Codrescu who is Romanian (well from his Gran). My Gran has said similar but neither of us have a radio segment on National Public Radio so I use Codrescu's Romanian line.
It means a couple of things all rolled into one. America is so rich that use expensive things for ridiculous purposes ("the streets are paved with gold" sort of thing) and they tell each other that it is rational or even required (in a "patriots should go shopping" sort of way). I guess really it's an expression of shock of US consumerism from people who formerly had nothing and now have enough to get by and are pretty happy (maybe even well off by their community's standards) but who are not driving a ford gargantuan. Anyway as I kid (I went to school in Atlanta) I would hear variants of such sayings in the proximity of either large, stupid and in your face advertisements or grandiose and silly displays of wealth.
In 1996 I was living in Atlanta too. Due in part to: the rampant corruption, petty crime, and local delusion they were going to make millions renting their homes to people coming to see the games it was really a pain to live in the city during the months leading up to the games. The traffic alone had convinced me to spend the time on Lake Lanier or Lake Rabun (wonder places really!). I wouldn't have even gone except I had a lot of relatives to visit expressly to see the games and many had never been to the US. So I went.
The level of advertising was astounding! Really!
Then we went to the main pavilion and their is this freak on a small box with a battery operated P.A. system railing against atheists & catholics (why specifically those two I have no idea) deafening all the people that entered and being that there was a line you got to listen for a while. My family members who do speak English told the rest what he was going on about and then I had to explain just what sort of place I lived in. Then to finish the evening off, a small bomb went off within ear shot.
So in summary America (particularly in the eyes of my Gran) is a land of crazed christian fundamentalists and maniacal advertisers.
I'm sure you've heard the phrase..."In America the dogs walk around with pretzels on their tails" That fits far better than I ever expected.
Actually, given the current climate it would be more profitable to cause spammers cancer or remove their lims automatically for each spam sent or kill their puppies or something like that.
It's common knowledge in the EU (well at least in the eastern bit of it) that at the rate of unexploded bomb removal it will take centuries to remove them all. People die all the time from accidently finding one when they set it off (or setting it of when they try to dispose of it). That's scary enough as it is but these are left overs than generally were delivered (meaning mostly they fell out of planes) so they are by themselves. These are a whole boat load (I think this is the first time in a life time of using the phrase that it is accurate!) of bombs setting next to each other.
It seems to me it would be good thing to develop a nano or microbial solution (don't they have mushrooms that eat High Explosives or was that diesel?).
Yes eventually Genetics will be commoditized, just like every other form of technology. The richest are only the fittest in their niche so I would say that it is like a species having an temporary artificial advantage. Also the capitalist society is the only society nor is it, arguably, the most advantageous.
I've wondered about automating education for a while now. listening to a lecture on an iPod is a start I suppose,
but I'd really like see is something more imersive for example: a gymnasium level class on ancient Greek history which included a walk through of a reconstructed temple complete with translations of inscriptions and explanation of art (both provided by an appropriately dressed priest avatar) using some 3d gaming engine like Doom's
If it was a gravitational wave wouldn't the LIGO facilities observe these phenomena a the same time and orientation (polarization?) that the Chinese or Belgian groups did?
When did LIGO come online? Sometime in the fall of '98 or '99 if memory serves.
I mostly agree with your post, but since I'm a space fan boy I can't resist to comment. I think NASA is researching stuff that will get funded and unfortunately to do that they begin with technology with obvious military uses. I've read a lot of articles on this propulsion system and I just can see it ever really making it out of military use. The efficiency of this is poor and that would drive costs up and that is one of the things that killed the concord. I fly to the US a couple of times a year and while I would like to have a dramatically shorter flight I'm not willing to pay more than I already have to (although I generally upgrade)
Oh and I find you comments about school books to be misplaced. The real problem with school books is that the whole publishing system is a corrupt money grab and is unrelated to the corrupt money grab that exists in the industrial military complex (other than the fact they both shows flaws inherent in the capitalist system).
You know I used to use this line a lot (leaving out the Mayan bit) until I hit on a christian fundamentalist who thought I was serious. I spent 40 uncomfortable minutes at lunch with a co-worker I had to interact with on a regular basis telling me all sorts of weird shit.
How do you tell a co-worker he's a freak and should be allowed to talk to children?
Well, I actually cut that phrase out of a news blurb I found with google because I didn't know what investors could sue for, that sounded like something that would involve a federal "Pound Me in the Ass" prison, so I used it:)
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To use an example with a series of books that I own all of (when I was a senior in high school) and you'd appreciate: why couldn't I have made just one graded report on "Tune to Win" or any other of Carrol Smith's books? What's the harm?
I had to resort to near death threats to be allowed to do a report on the Lord of the Rings. My report of Joesph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" was refused because I hadn't asked permission to report on a book not on the list.
Let me tell you from the perspective from a 15 year old it seams like the only reason for a rule like that is that none of the English teachers had read a book since they read the required reading list why they were in high school and did not want to bother to read others.
hmmm... I haven't read Steinbeck since '82 maybe I should go back to it. I probably have several of his books somewhere...
In the US they had a couple of additional other ones (that I remember): Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon (Good but depressing)
John Knowles - A Separate Peace (OK but depressing)
Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage (depressing & irrelevant )
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - The Yearling (this book has no redeeming qualities to speak of)
Hemmingway - Old man and the sea (I read this way to young because I went back to it in university and it was quite good and got me to read his other stuff)
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (good but old enough to be nearly irrelevant as racism is very different in the south these days)
Look at these books, most of them where written quite a while ago and take place even longer ago. The style they were written in does have the same impact it had on the people that read when they came out. Really I don't mind reading books written a while ago (my current kick is great white hunter tales of the late 1800's) but kids want things that are interesting, fun and relevant to them not some endless stream of old depressing (or repressed) crap. Some percentage really should be fun up to date literature even if it is the modern day equivalent of "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze!" (Great stuff!)
.
Funny George Orwell's 1984 means more to me now than when I read it in ... 1984!
I'm an avid book collector and for some stupid reason still have the books I had to read in US high school and I've read them many years later on a rainy day out of boredom and guess what they STILL suck. Easily the worst 2~3% of my collection come from either required reading lists. That's not to say that they are all bad, but the required list's batting average would put them on the bench in my team!
How about books that are more relevant to the lives young people live today?
I think it is a grievous insult to Skinner as he was a serious scientist and the line of investigation that bears his name still is meaningful and interesting.
John LaMuth at best is some sort of freaky delusional Californian and worst is money grubbing opportunist. This is not science; it's unworthy of a patent and is simply one of hundreds of examples of capitalism at its worst that appear to pour out of America and American politicians today.
Wow, it's awful early in the morning for me to start ranting but I suppose patents is a worthy topic!
oh... and I did RTFA that's what got me riled up!
YES!
It means a couple of things all rolled into one. America is so rich that use expensive things for ridiculous purposes ("the streets are paved with gold" sort of thing) and they tell each other that it is rational or even required (in a "patriots should go shopping" sort of way). I guess really it's an expression of shock of US consumerism from people who formerly had nothing and now have enough to get by and are pretty happy (maybe even well off by their community's standards) but who are not driving a ford gargantuan. Anyway as I kid (I went to school in Atlanta) I would hear variants of such sayings in the proximity of either large, stupid and in your face advertisements or grandiose and silly displays of wealth.
The level of advertising was astounding! Really!
Then we went to the main pavilion and their is this freak on a small box with a battery operated P.A. system railing against atheists & catholics (why specifically those two I have no idea) deafening all the people that entered and being that there was a line you got to listen for a while. My family members who do speak English told the rest what he was going on about and then I had to explain just what sort of place I lived in. Then to finish the evening off, a small bomb went off within ear shot.
So in summary America (particularly in the eyes of my Gran) is a land of crazed christian fundamentalists and maniacal advertisers.
I'm sure you've heard the phrase..."In America the dogs walk around with pretzels on their tails" That fits far better than I ever expected.
Actually, given the current climate it would be more profitable to cause spammers cancer or remove their lims automatically for each spam sent or kill their puppies or something like that.
But only because youy did not say what to do with the waste!
It seems to me it would be good thing to develop a nano or microbial solution (don't they have mushrooms that eat High Explosives or was that diesel?).
They are suing people who are sharing files. How do you know the identity of everyone downloading using these P2P programs?
And I think you're right capitalist society is evolving to something more than capitalist.
Yes eventually Genetics will be commoditized, just like every other form of technology. The richest are only the fittest in their niche so I would say that it is like a species having an temporary artificial advantage. Also the capitalist society is the only society nor is it, arguably, the most advantageous.
but I'd really like see is something more imersive for example: a gymnasium level class on ancient Greek history which included a walk through of a reconstructed temple complete with translations of inscriptions and explanation of art (both provided by an appropriately dressed priest avatar) using some 3d gaming engine like Doom's
So evolution ceases to be survival of the fittest and becomes survival of the richest.
Otherwise what's the point?
The first thing I think of is Tang!
When did LIGO come online? Sometime in the fall of '98 or '99 if memory serves.
Oh and I find you comments about school books to be misplaced. The real problem with school books is that the whole publishing system is a corrupt money grab and is unrelated to the corrupt money grab that exists in the industrial military complex (other than the fact they both shows flaws inherent in the capitalist system).
I've been doing it for over fifteen, I haven't seen a clearly specificed project either
How do you tell a co-worker he's a freak and should be allowed to talk to children?
Or at least set it to anything else? Why can't we choose the colour ourselves?
Well, I actually cut that phrase out of a news blurb I found with google because I didn't know what investors could sue for, that sounded like something that would involve a federal "Pound Me in the Ass" prison, so I used it :)
I hope the phallic protrusion fits on my iPaq!